Week 8 – 10 Miles and a Mathematical equation

It’s only the eighth week and I cracked double digits.   That’s an exciting milestone, - or so they tell me.  I, in response to having completed 10 miles on Saturday morning, nearly had a panic attack when I started to do some calculations.   Granted, this would not be the first time that math has caused anxiety for me, but hear me out. 

In 8 weeks, I have come to run 10 miles.   At first glance it appears I averaged a gain of 1.25 miles a week.  But, that’s not really accurate because we started this whole thing off at 3 miles.   So, I have to subtract 3 from 10, (for those of you who also have difficulty with math, that’s 7), which means my actual rate of mileage accrual was .875 miles per week.  

There are 9 weeks remaining between now and the marathon.   That means adding….16.2 miles!   And, that means adding an average of 1.8 miles every week between now and the marathon.   I hope you are starting to see why panic set in.  Up until now, I was optimistic about this whole experience, after all this is a well–thought out program that I am following that lots of people have followed before me.  But, these are cold hard numbers staring me in the face.   Who can argue with numbers?

Well, later that afternoon as the panic subsided, I was feeling substantially better than I usually do after my morning runs.  I was wide awake, playing with Oliver, grocery shopping and getting things done around the house.   While doing all that I realized that if I had only committed to doing a half marathon, I could probably go out and do it next weekend (don’t get excited my schedule has me doing 12 miles and that’s as far as I am going), but realistically, I probably could do a half.   What would have been the challenge in accomplishing something in 17 weeks, that I now know I could have done in 9? None.   That reconfirmed my belief that choosing to do the full marathon was the right choice.  

A little later still, however, I realized that my higher level energy may not have actually been due to physical gains on my part, but rather, the fact that practice started at 8 on Saturday, not 7.   Damn numbers.